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Chat: Dave Costill

Fueled by his own desire to understand the physiology of distance runners Costill, turned the human performance laboratory at Ball State University into the place to study if you wanted a career in sports science

Dave Costill was one of the pioneers in research on runners. Fueled by his own desire to understand the physiology of distance runners and what it took to run fast, Costill, a swimmer, turned the human performance laboratory at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, into the place to study if you wanted a career in sports science. The graduates from Costill's lab make up a virtual who's who of the prominent exercise physiologists in the U.S. In addition to his research, Costill wrote and lectured extensively. He was one of the participants in the 1976 New York Academy of Sciences seminal symposium on the science of marathon running. On Wednesday of last week, Costill was the lead off speaker at the LaSalle Banks Chicago Marathon World Congress on Science and Medicine of the Marathon conference on the marathon.

Runner's World Daily: You challenged the speakers at this conference to inform us what is new.Dave Costill: There really hasn't been a lot of new stuff in the past 30 years. It's mainly been descriptive work, studies that document and describe what we know. But we're approaching the point where we are getting the technology to examine what is going on in the body on a molecular level. So, while we've been able to describe, thus far, the changes that a body goes through as the athlete improves, we may, with the new technology, be able to look at the genetic triggers that regulate the adaptive reponses.

RWD: So, it's similar to what's being done in disease science, where researchers are looking for the genetic triggers for a disease state, say cancer?DC: Yes. What's the internal mechanism that allows us to adapt to the training. These are probably genetically controlled. So, the question is do we have the tools yet to be able to investigate the answers to these questions.

RWD: What interested you in the presentations on the first day of this conference?DC: The presentation by (Daniel) Lieberman(Harvard anthropology professor who spoke on the "evolution of man as a marathon runner"). I'd like to hear more about the evolution of humans. (Lieberman's presentation) put things in perspective on how we've evolved to be good endurance athletes. Basically, what it tells us is that you are programmed to be what you are. What sort of gifts you have.

When I coached Bob Fitts (champion distance runner who is one now one of the most prominent muscle researchers in the U.S.), we used to have heated arguments about performance. He would insist that anybody could be a champion if they trained hard enough. He's since changed his opinion. Now, he admits: "Oh no, it's genetics." If you start looking at genetics in a four hour marathoner and a 2:05 guy, they are markedly different.

RWD: How did you get into this field?DC: I always liked sport. My sport was swimming. I guess I'm more genetically suited to that than running. I was captain of the swimming team at Ohio University. And I was always interested in biology, how things worked. I was dissecting frogs when I was six, seven years old. But, when I went to college I had no intention of getting into biology, but I took a physiology course and I was hooked. I wanted to know why things worked. Same with running, when I got into that, I wanted to know why all these guys were faster than me.

I had been coaching and Ball State wanted to start a lab. I applied and got the job. When I arrived there, all there was was an empty room. I was able to recruit the money and get things going. But the real fortunate thing that happened was that Ed Winrow showed up to do graduate work. He knew all the top runners in the U.S. So we were able to get them to come in and we could study them.

RWD: Your lab was the place to go to study exercise physiology at that time?DC: I was fascinated with runners. because I grew up in the '50s. I knew all the runners. Roger Bannister, Chris Brasher. Those were my heroes. So, I sort of fell into it. All the distance runners knew if they wanted to study runners, they should come to my lab.

RWD: You used to "piggy back" your studies on athletes onto other studies your lab was contracted to do.DC: Nobody has, to any great degree, funded research into sports science. I just happened to come along at a time when running had become a hot topic. In the early '70s, there wasn't a marathon race that didn't have a clinic along with it. There was a great hunger for information. People wanted to know about running.

RWD: Your goal with this research was related to your own efforts to run marathons and maximize your efforts there.DC: Yes, you could say that my research has always had a personal tinge. When I was running, I was interested in running. When I got injured running and went back to swimming, I got interested in swimming. Now, I'm getting old, and I'm interested in aging. My research focus has mirrored that.

The research I did was because I wanted to know how to run faster. We're all goal oriented, and the goal was to run fast times. I don't have the genetics to be an elite runner, but the goal wasn't to see what I could do.

RWD: Back then, there weren't as many runners, but the goal was to see how fast you could run, no matter what your genetic gifts or lack of them.DC: The goal was time. It wasn't so much who you beat, but how fast you were able to run relative to your best time. Now, it's a whole new population out there. The goal is not to run fast, it's to finish.

RWD: Today we know more about running physiology, and much of a runner's success depends on his ability to learn and manage his own body.DC: The best computer in the world is in your head. The experience of training, of running a race. You learn what the thresholds are.

RWD: For the non-elite runners, the research on exercise has also been beneficial.DC: What we've documented is what is good about exercise, how it helps the older adults. How it helps everyone. My early research was on the causes of heart disease. At that time, in the late '60s, Muncie (Indiana, where Ball State is located) was always referred to as Middle Town USA. And I looked around and saw the adults in Muncie. A lot of them were overweight. They smoked. Had a lot of bad habits. I said to myself that if this was what middle America was like, I didn't want to be like that.

I remember going to Europe in the '70s. I never saw a fat person. I went back recently and it's not that way anymore. They are getting more like us. The U.S. is leading the way. They did an ergonomic study years ago where they measured the distance the average worker put in during a typical day. It was about a quarter-mile. Thanks to the research that's been done, everyone now knows what's good about exercise.

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